The Diluents of Time
by TwixerThePony
Summary: Dimensional travel, slowing time, and surprisingly accurate physics, oh my!
1. Chapter 1

Nick awoke.

He felt a pain in his chest and a sharp object in his arm.

Everything was dark. He could make out slight details of things, like how he was in a bed, and he was in a room; that there were chairs at the end in front of him, but it was dark, almost terrifyingly dark. Darker than anything he'd seen before (except pitch dark, of course).

He wondered, "What the hell happened?!" "Where am I?"

He saw a figure walk into the room, he seemed like he was going in slow motion.

Then, it was like the universe turned on again. A flash of all colors of things that didn't make sense, first, a flash of purple light down the hall, that quickly went through all the colors of the rainbow in backwards order. It went dark again, only for a moment. The lights turned on, he heard a beep, and he could see the full room.

The figure was gone, Nick remembered back a little to figure that it walked out during the strange multi colored flashing.

The room was a hospital room, the beep went off again. A heart monitor. Was he on drugs that just wore off? Why was he put on drugs? He looked up to his right, an IV was dribbling a clear liquid into his body, that's what the object in his arm was. He looked left, Chief Bobo was there, how did he not notice sooner? He was gigantic.

"Nick, you're awake. Finally…" Chief said to him. What was he talking about? Finally?

He spotted Judy behind him, asleep as well, in a chair. She was covered in a blanket obviously not placed by herself.

"Chief? Why am I in a hospital? How long was I out? I feel like crap, like I overslept." Nick asked.

"Three days, Nick. You've been in a medically induced coma for three days." Came his answer from the bull.

"Three days?!" Nick thought out loud. "What happened?!" He exclaimed.

"You were shot. Five times. Twice in your left leg, once in the hand, your shoulder, and finally your chest. I'm not surprised you don't remember. You were 'dead' for about two and a half minutes. Judy was traumatized, I doubt even I could stay conscious seeing someone I knew personally in a pool of their own blood that large."

Nick's mouth was agape. He was thinking so hard about what happened, no memories of the event, but he did remember the case he was on.

"The drug bust, huh?" He asked slowly, as if he was going to pass out himself.

"Yep. Judy saved your life. She actually slowed the bleeding just enough so your heart could go long enough that you didn't go brain dead. She looked like she murdered someone with so much red on her hands, but she did just the opposite."

Nick couldn't say anything. There were no words for what happened.

A nurse came in to check on him, a buck. He told him "Hey Nick, glad you're awake." The Buck looked at Judy with a sad but compassionate look. "She saved your life twice that day, because she was the one that could find your mother so she could give you a transfusion. Your phone was destroyed because it was drenched in blood, if she didn't have your mother on the line, you might not of gotten the blood in time."

This was a bit too much to handle. But right now he couldn't catch a break, because as soon as the Chief and the Nurse left, Judy woke up.

"Nick!" She almost screamed as she came over, stretching her left arm over his chest, covered in white gauze, and interlocking her fingers with his.

"Hey Carrots, you're a bit friendly today." Nick said slyly and weakly, he realized his mouth was dry. But like the nurse read his mind, the deer came in with a glass of water.

"Oh shut it Nick… I'm just so glad you're alive! I… I was so worried… I haven't left this room since I walked in. The nice nurses here fed me, but I wouldn't leave even if they didn't." Judy said as she laid her head on his upper chest that wasn't covered in bandages. Nick could feel that she was crying.

"Oh, Carrots..." Nick said, unable to get a coherent thought to reply to the fact that she was the only reason he was alive, and she didn't even boas about it.

"I don't knowwww-" Nick started to say something, but the sounds coming out of his mouth ceased. In fact, there was no sound at all. The heart monitor stopped beeping, Judy was no longer crying. She was still, like she just died. She wasn't breathing, at least not that he could see.

Nick sat up in his bed and yelled at the top of his lungs, but nothing came out, he reached and tried to touch her, but his left arm (the one shot in the hand and shoulder) wouldn't move, and his right arm couldn't reach her head.

A fox walked into his room. He was wearing a suit. He realized it was the same shape as the figure he saw earlier. The fox turned to Nick. It looked like a twin brother to Nick, he looked exactly the same.

The fox didn't move his mouth, and pointed to his head.

Sound came into his brain like he was listening through earbuds.

"Hello, Nick. My name, is Nick."


	2. Chapter 2

"What?!" Nick squeaked, or, at least tried to. He still couldn't make a sound out of his mouth. "What did you do to Judy you son of a bitch?!" He tried to yell.

"Nick, Nick calm down. Judy is fine, I promise." He said, mouth still not moving. "I'm not here to hurt you, or anyone you love. You have a lot of questions. I know." He continued.

Nick couldn't do anything. He wanted to take out the IV so he could knock the doppelgänger of himself out, but something else caught his eye.

"Don't touch Judy, please. You will only hurt her." The other Nick stated, a caring look in his eye.

There was a needle in his arm, it's the IV used to put some sort of medicine in his body. But there was a problem. The wire connecting the needle to the bag was not making just one curve, like something following the laws of physics. Nick didn't like physics class, but he knew that IV wires aren't supposed to float like that. In fact…

"Yes I look like you, named after you, all that. But I'm not coping you. Trust me."

Nick swayed his right arm slowly back and forth. The wire, still connecting to his arm, was floating. Floating like wires he saw on space stations like the ISSS (InterSpecies Space Station), the ones with no gravity. Nick looked up to the plastic tube connecting the IV bag to the IV wire, it usually has a steady drip, but now there was no dripping, in fact, he could see a teardrop shape, the droplet frozen in mid air.

"Are you listening to me, Nick?" The other Nick said. "Listen. This is gonna sound crazy I know. If you wanna know, I'm communicating to you via thought-speak type of thing. I don't really understand it either. It's two way, too."

Nick was preoccupied with the wire that was supposed to be giving him painkillers. It moved in ways he didn't think were possible with regular objects in the real world. It wasn't obeying gravity. But he was fine, laying fine on the bed, except that it felt like he was underwater when breathing and moving his arm.

"Nick, c'mon. I don't really want to wait around while you play around with your medicine. Try talking. Well, not actually talking, just think about it."

Nick tried thinking about talking. He heard himself making short squeaks in his mind, different from the regular thoughts he was having. Like he was speaking in a microphone and he was hearing himself talk, echoing a little.

"You're coming through, roughly, try again. Imagine that you're talking to me regularly, but without actually... doing it, eh?"

This was a very good actor if this guy was a fraud. Nick thought again following the other Nick's directions.

"What… is… going… on?"

It worked.

"I know, it's crazy. I stopped time."

"You're joking. There's no way you stopped time." Nick replied immediately.

"Ehh… yeah, you're right. The guys who made this said it's not stopping time it's just slowing it down by a lot or something like that. I'm not even sure how." The other Nick explained.

"Oh my god." Nick said slowly. This guy must be from the future or something.

"Call me… Mr. Hopps. I know you hate saying your name as much as I do. We… are the same person, after all." He stated.

"You're kidding." Nick said back.

"Nope! 78 years coming up soon in fact." He flashed his wedding ring.

"78 years?!" Nick exclaimed.

"Yep. Still going strong. And she's still beautiful, too. Also, the folks that made the whole… time travel thing made me say I'm not actually from the future. Something about the multiverse and a bunch of numbers I don't understand nor care to." He continued. "But, I'll get to the point, and you can go back to comforting your future wife and all. I need your help. There's something really, really really bad that's going to happen soon, and you need to stop it." Mr. Hopps said, breaking his cool and happy composure and switching to a much more serious one.

"Me? Why don't you do it?" Nick asked in return.

"Because I can't. Nick, I'm 111 years old. I can't do that sort of thing anymore. All I can do is help you along the way. You can bring Judy too, but only her! You can't tell another being on this planet. I swear. Don't even write this down in that diary you kept from when you were twelve 'just in case'." Mr. Hopps continued.

"Wait… how do you know about- wait, right. You're me." Nick sighed, this was a bit much to wrap his mind around. "Did you say you were 111? How do you look so young?"

"Ha, right. Not gonna seem like I'd look like this for about 20 years. The future is bright my friend." He replied, then added, "You are handling this information quite well, Nick. Meeting your future self isn't quite something that happens every day."

"Well, I guess it's the huge amount of morphine coursing though my veins." Nick answered.

"Hah, I guess so. Well, here." Mr. Hopps passed him a card with a phone number on it, but it had two extra digits at the end.

Nick looked at his otherworldly self nodded, hoping that the two extra digits wouldn't be a problem for his phone.

Mr. Hopps gave him a CarrotPhone as well. "I'm sure you'll need this too." He said, tacking on a small laugh as Nick remembered what happened to his own phone.

"Oh, right, thanks." He said in return.

"I'll be off now, give you time to think about it. Lay it softly to Judy, but I know that she will be able to handle it. Here, take this as well." He handed Nick a digital watch.

"What's this? I already have a watch" Nick asked, confused.

"That isn't for telling time, it's for diluting it. An app on the phone actually does the work, but that's how you tell it what you want to stay "real time" or whatever you'd call it. It also automatically does it for whoever holds the phone as well, so the watch is for Judy. I have a more expensive version that does it remotely, so you don't need a watch while I've stopped time like right now. Also, don't ask me how it works. I don't have a damn clue."

All Nick could reply with is a quiet "woah.." looking at all the power in his hands.

"Time is your greatest power, Nick. Use it wisely."

Nick nodded. Mr. Hopps turned on his phone, tapped a couple things, and disappeared.

Nick thought the phone could also teleport, but after he heard a beep again, he realized he just disconnected him from the app on his phone, and he just walked out. The IV wire was yanked out of his arm and the whole was thrown across the room and down into the tiled ground, the wire itself, snapping apart into many pieces. Judy, still crying on his chest, quickly looked up, shocked by the sudden movement of the inanimate object.

"What the-?" She said slowly, getting up to check it out.

Nicks arm, having the hollow needle yanked out of him, started bleeding profusely, the artery that was poked to get the medicine into his bloodstream was now gushing with every heatbeat.

"Ow, ow, ow, Judy, get a bandaid!" Nick said quickly.

Judy looked at his bleeding arm and asked "What just happened? Did you yank your arm down or something? And what happened to this wire? It's shredded!" Judy said, getting up and opening a drawer next to Nick's bed to get a bandaid.

"Uhm…" Nick did know what happened, he realized he was moving at maybe a million miles an hour, swaying his arm back and forth ripped the IV wire apart and sent it flying when he finally set his arm back down. Now he knows why moving felt like moving through water, the air itself was having trouble moving out of the way of him. He might as well tell Judy what happened now instead of later, he knew she would be able to handle it, at least she'd be excited over this apparent superpower.

"Judy… you might wanna sit down for this." Judy attaching his bandage and wiping up the blood on his arm looked at Nick strangely. Nick never called her by her first name, not at any point in the three months that she knew him, unless it was serious.

"Erm... why?" She asked.

"'Cause you aren't gonna believe this…"


	3. Chapter 2-1

**Hey all you 7 fans of this story! I just wanted to say thank you for recognizing my existence! This chapter is not important to the story but wanted to but it in because it added a little bit of backstory! It's short, but _really_ dark, so be warned!  -Twixer**

Dimensional travel terrified Mr. Hopps, but it was his job as a police officer to do it. He had seen things he would never forget.

He had to go from universe to universe, warping constantly, trying to find the right combinations of outcomes, but that was tough work.

He had traveled to universes where he had never existed. He had seen Judy as a parking maid, but instead of meeting himself, she went home. Day after day he watched her, deteriorating slowly as Zootopia collapsed around her, as she never stopped Bellwether.

He had seen the worst of things. He had seen Judy herself go savage, he had seen her get killed by Bogo himself, executed because of suspicion of treason, or because Bogo himself was savage. He had seen Judy kill herself in ways he doesn't want to remember. Jumping out the window of her four story apartment, shooting herself in the head, jump in front of a car, and just straight up hanging herself in her room.

He had seen himself do the same. Nick, fed up with his constant life of crime, giving up or snapping. He'd always go out in the most spectacular ways, but these events were far too gruesome to list.

The most troubling part is that these instances are real. They weren't simulations or acting. He had seen these things in attempt to find the Nick and Judy that could truly help save the world. To create a universe that was could be saved. There was no hope for his anymore, his only job was to give hope for a different one.

He had tried to find the right way to pass the information to Nick and Judy so many times too. More times than he could count. He had tried to give the watch to them without telling them, but it never really worked. He had come to them in their own office, but every time they got far, they never made it. Death to him was no longer a problem, he could always go back and try again. Each failure he put a tick mark on his upper arm, a scar under his fur. Every time he looked at that he was tortured from the memories of seeing not only himself die, but Judy too. His life had become a broken record of sadness and death. Unless he died… then what? He wouldn't be able to continue anymore, he wouldn't be able to finish his mission. He had to lie to himself, literally. Having to tell him that he was "too old" to do the missions. He didn't like lying like that, but last time… last time he told Nick, and he didn't take it too well. He kept asking for help even though it was to dangerous to help. And Nick definitely couldn't shoot himself five times and blame it on a "bad drug sting" a third time. He couldn't see Judy traumatized by seeing her partner almost get killed again.

At least, when he went home, he could always see his wife again, safe and sound. What seemed like one work day to her might be several days, weeks, or even months to Nick, as he always traveled back whenever he needed a break from it all, or just whenever he had failed again. But he was in fact running out of time. He didn't exactly know how much time he had left with Judy, but every time he comes back, everything is a little bit worse. By scientists calculations, it was only 57 days before the sun itself would go out, as it would no longer be in balance, and would collapse on itself. 57 more nights, 57 more chances. Then what? How fast would the planet cool until the elite would all go underground so they could live with geothermal heat? How long until they all froze to death?


End file.
